← U.S. Residential Roofing Basics
Roof shapes and the names of their edges
By the end: Locate ridge, eave, rake, hip, valley, soffit, and fascia on a simple drawing.
A gable roof has two main sloping planes meeting at a ridge. Its triangular end is the gable. The eave is the low horizontal edge; the rake is a sloping edge at a gable. Fascia is the face at the roof edge, and soffit is the underside of an overhang. A gutter collects runoff at an eave; it is not the eave itself.
On a hip roof, sloping planes meet along raised diagonal lines called hips. A valley is the inward meeting line between roof planes. Valleys concentrate runoff, while ridges and hips divide it. A shed roof has one main plane. A low-slope roof still needs a designed drainage path; “flat” is not permission for water to sit indefinitely.
Practice communicating without jargon first: “the inward corner where two slopes drain together.” Then name it: valley. On a job handoff, location plus function is more useful than a term alone. Chimneys, skylights, and plumbing vents interrupt the field of the roof and need their own water-management details.
Diagram description
A top-down gable roof plan shows horizontal eaves at its upper and lower edges, rakes at the ends, and the ridge across its middle. A separate eave section identifies the vertical fascia and horizontal soffit under the overhang. A hip is a raised junction; a valley is an inward junction.
- Draw a house with a two-plane roof. Label its ridge, two eaves, and the sloping rake edge.
- Add an L-shaped wing. Mark the valley where runoff from the two roofs meets.
- Add a chimney. Circle the roof-to-chimney junction rather than the chimney cap.
Quick check
Which feature gathers water from two adjoining slopes?